Second week of school/work/parent from home

(Can you spot the small child on a Zoom conference call in the above photo?) 

Last week, James had the stomach flu so he was spending the afternoons napping in bed.  This week, everyone is in good health and still moving through our work (school work and paid work).  

We start our days with breakfast during our morning meeting, which is run by Alma with James as a co-chair, before going on a family walk along the Chester Valley Trail.  When we get back to the house, we all jump into work mode until lunchtime when we gather at the dining room table again to eat leftovers.  The kids have been completing their work in the morning and spending the afternoon playing together.  Joshua has been the champ of working while also parenting/teaching the children.  The school started video conferencing lessons this week, which made for a full week of all four of us on computers throughout the day.  I've been trying to stop working at a reasonable time so that I can take the kids outside again before dinner.  

The extra family time has been lovely but days are packed.  We are certainly not suffering from the boredom that some uncoupled colleagues have noted they are experiencing in this work-from-home environment.  As usual, Joshua never gets a real break and I don't have the downtime provided by my 20-minute commute to/from work.  Although I miss my quiet office in the Mansion, I prefer my current colleagues who pop by my desk to give me a hug and loving encouragement.

Overall, the children are coping with this transition well.  They like all the time home with us and with each other.  We are so blessed that they get along 98% of the time.  And the 2% of the time they don't get along is usually because a parent got in the way of their relationship (usually me).  Joshua and I have been laughing that we don't have much of a social life in general so the children haven't noticed much of a change.  The main complaint has been not seeing their cousins who live in the region, especially for birthday celebrations.

Joshua is going to the grocery store once per week and being very careful about not collecting germs while he is at the store and not bringing germs into the house with the groceries.  Wegmans is very clean and limiting how much shoppers can take in order to ensure a consistent supply chain.  I'm so grateful to Joshua for taking on this task, which I would find immensely stressful.

While these are odd times, they are made especially so by how normal-but-not-normal everything is.  The weather has been nice -- our mild winter has adjusted into a mild spring.  The flowers are blooming, the snakes have returned to our front yard, and neighbors are all out (but simply waving from afar).  We are so grateful for our health and each other.  However, we are constantly worried about the health and safety of our larger society.  We hope that our leaders can make choices that benefit us all.